During the two weeks course Concept Development, nine teams developed a concept to improve one task of their previously selected user group. User groups were limited to mobile, social or outdoor workers and a tablet had to be involved. Concepts were allowed to be visionary up to ten years ahead concerning technical practicability.
Here is the final concept of team 5: Catch-a-Client
We developed an app offering a taxi driver to plan his day as efficiently as possible. It calculates routes with increased client appearance dynamically, which the driver can select and drive along. With this app long waiting periods will be avoided and better day planning achieved.
The system shows promising places by evaluating the following input:
events, cancellation of local traffic, business flights, competing taxis, weather, applied load of mobile networks, rush hours (central station, airport), credit-worthiness and holidays and vacation. The driver chooses proposed targets and is led past those places.
The main problems of taxi drivers are the long waiting periods and that they cannot “hunt” clients proactively, being damned to hope passively for agency calls or occasional customers. Our App solves this problem, having the potential to change the market’s power structure for the benefit of the driver.
Various analyses (driver’s log, personal favorite targets) as well as the possibility to plan routes for the next days (incl. points-of-interest, e.g. low priced filling stations) are beneficial for other industries as well. The identification of people accumulations offers meaningful applications for emergency planning or mobile points of sale, as well as for the organisation of street interviews in market research or journalism in general.
More Details on their project can be found in the Concept Development Blog.
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